Rebekah: Women of Genesis (24 page)

Except that Eliezer had assumed what Rebekah assumed—that God had not wasted any time about granting their prayers, and they would not waste any time about getting on with fulfilling his will.

Rebekah felt just a little foolish about having had Deborah spend an hour with her this evening, helping her choose which of her clothing would be useful in her new role as a wife, and which would be left behind because it was too girlish. The truth was, there wasn’t all that much that was worth taking along. Abraham’s household was bound to have plenty of fine seamstresses who could fashion new clothing for her. She really needed only enough for the journey and her first weeks as a bride.

Now, of course, she realized that for the next month all the seamstresses in camp would be taken from their other duties and devote themselves to sewing the clothing Rebekah would need. Mother would know exactly what to do.

The feasting wound down soon after Rebekah returned to the fire—as Mother had said it would. And that night, Rebekah slept easily, knowing that this was not her last night in Father’s household after all.

In the morning, she woke early, as always, but felt a little sleepy and a little lazy, as well. The household really wasn’t her concern anymore. For good or ill, it was Mother’s to rule, and Rebekah could spend a little more time than usual on herself.

Deborah was delighted, of course, because she loved to play with Rebekah’s hair. But they were not half done when there was a loud clapping outside her tent, followed at once by Laban’s voice.

“Rebekah, are you in there?” He sounded urgent.

“Can’t somebody else take care of whatever it is?” she asked.

“They want you,” he said, and now she realized he was upset. “Father and Mother. And that
steward.
”

“My hair’s only half done.”

“You’re going to make them wait for you to do your
hair?
” asked Laban.

“That question from the boy who used to tease me when my hair
wasn’t
nicely done?”

“Rebekah, he thinks he’s going to take you away this morning. Now. And for some reason Father is leaving it up to you!”

That was enough to get Rebekah on her feet, quickly brushing out her hair so it hung thick and wavy and unadorned, as if she were a little girl. In a moment she was outside the tent with Laban, hurrying to Father’s tent.

“Laban, this makes no sense. Mother already decided I was staying, and when it comes to that sort of thing, she doesn’t change her mind.”

“You think she didn’t argue? I tell you, she tried everything. Her laugh. Her smile. Her famous frown. That sarcastic snippy sound that unrams a man in six words. The whole arsenal. And he only smiled and said, ‘My master is old. He hopes to see his son married before he dies.’ He had Mother bargaining with him. If not a month, then ten days. Then a week. How can we make dresses for her—and he says, don’t you think my master has dressmakers as fine as any in Haran? An answer for everything. And I was arguing too, you can be sure of that, but he says to me, ‘Please don’t hinder me, seeing how the Lord has blessed my errand and made it prosper. Send me away so I may go to my master.’ The same thing, over and over, as if we hadn’t spoken, and I guess we got so excited we stopped writing things for Father, until he finally roars for everybody to be still, and he says, ‘We’ll call Rebekah and see what
she
says,’ and Mother is just speechless that Father would even suggest leaving it up to you—”

“Speechless? Mother?”

“Well, for a moment, but when she starts to write some kind of argument, Father takes the stick out of her hand—you know how he does that, to make us stop talking—”

“Oh, yes. I’ve had welts on my palms, he rips the stick away so fast sometimes.”

“And so there I went to fetch you, and now here we are, and isn’t this completely mad? Of course you’ll—”

But she didn’t wait for him to finish his sentence. Instead she walked into the tent and found the same group that had been there for the betrothal yesterday, except that this time Pillel was with them.

Mother was the first to speak. “This . . . man . . . thinks that his master is at the point of death and expects you to go, today, with no chance for farewells, no clothing, no parting gifts, no chance for me to say good-bye to the daughter I have only had for the past year—”

And with those words Mother burst into tears.

Another weapon in her arsenal?

Rebekah doubted it. Mother did not use tears the way some women did—tears weaken a woman and make her a supplicant, and Mother’s other charms worked so well that Rebekah had never seen her resort to crying. Besides, it didn’t sound like the demure weeping of someone doing it for effect. These were deep, heartfelt sobs. Rebekah found it strangely pleasant, to think that her mother would weep like this for her. Pleasant—not distressing. As if she were seeing it from a distance. Something happening to strangers.

These aren’t strangers, these are the people I love most in all the world.

And yet, in her heart, she was already gone. All that foolishness of waiting around for clothing to be made—what was the point? She had already felt it this morning. The sense of detachment. Of having no duties here. Of already being gone.

A month of that? I’d lose my mind, she thought.

Father, seeing that no one was saying anything and that Mother was not likely to be easily comforted, turned to Rebekah and asked, simply, “Will you go with this man?”

“I’ll go,” said Rebekah.

Mother’s weeping stopped almost at once. Proof that it had been a device after all? No—it was a sign of a deeper shock. Mother looked up at her with the face of tragedy. The face that she might have worn when her husband sent her away from her family all those years ago.

Rebekah immediately fell to her knees and embraced her mother, held her tight and close, and whispered in her ear, “I love you, Mother, but this is what I was born for, and it’s my time. We had a year. Thank God for that year.”

“Or curse him,” Mother said—not quietly, “because a year was all we had.”

“It was not the God of Abraham,” said Rebekah, “who cost us the first fifteen years of my life.” Then she kissed her mother to take away the sting of those words . . . though later she would realize that Mother probably assumed she meant that it was Father’s fault, while Rebekah meant to blame it on Asherah.

Rebekah rose from before her mother and embraced Laban. “I hope I have sons as fine and good as the son my parents had,” she said. “I hope they’re as good to each other as you have been to me.” He hugged her back, but said nothing, and when they parted she saw why. He was weeping—silently, but too intensely for him to speak.

Father rose to embrace her. For a moment she almost cried herself, wishing with all her heart that she could speak to him as she had spoken to the others, that just this once God would give him the gift of hearing. But as she embraced him, she spoke anyway, loudly enough that Mother and Laban and Pillel could hear her, so one of them could tell him later what she said. “You raised me to be the true servant of the God of Bethuel. Now see how he blesses me because I had you for my father.” She kissed him and embraced him and now she did weep into his shoulder, not really for parting from him now, but rather for the memory of all the hours she had spent at that shoulder when she was a toddler and he carried her everywhere. It was her childhood, and the father of her childhood, that she mourned for. It was the songs she sang for him, and even if she stayed now, he would hear no singing from her.

Finally she pulled away from her weeping father and turned to Pillel. She offered him her hand, but when he reached to take it, she pulled him, too, into an embrace. “You are a man of honor,” she said, “and you have deserved the perfect trust we all have had in you.”

She did not look to see whether there were any tears in his eyes. She wasn’t sure which would be worse—to see that there weren’t any, or that there were.

Now she was face to face with Eliezer. “I packed last night,” she said. “So did my nurse, Deborah. I’ll show your men which sacks and boxes to take.”

Eliezer nodded gravely, his eyes never leaving hers.

“What?” she asked him.

“You,” he said. “I don’t know if Isaac is ready for you.”

“Do you think the Lord chose the wrong bride after all?” she asked.

“Of course he doesn’t think that,” said Mother, her voice husky. “He thinks you’re a marvel. Because you are. And I can tell you right now, no man on earth is ready for this girl, but he’ll never realize it because she’ll never let him see it, because that’s the kind of perfect wife she’ll be, and don’t you forget it.”

The words seemed aimed at Eliezer, but it was Father and Laban and Pillel she looked at when she spoke.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive any of you,” said Father, “that I haven’t been told a word of this since she said, ‘I’ll go.’”

In the end, she took more than Deborah with her. Mother insisted on it—it would shame Bethuel’s house if she came with only one servant. Besides, as Mother pointed out, Rebekah needed to have servants in her new home who were loyal only to her. “Any women already there will be loyal to whoever has been ruling there, and they’ll be quick to find fault with you and slow to obey. You need women who need you as much as you need them. The women you take with you from this household will get enormous prestige from being closest to you. Eventually they’ll marry within your husband’s household, and everyone will live together in perfect harmony.”

This last was said with just enough irony for Rebekah to know Mother didn’t think she was fool enough to believe it. Rebekah chose five girls that she liked and who looked eager to be chosen, and as they hurried to say their good-byes and pack their few belongings, Rebekah saw to the loading of the camels. She had chosen five because the women would have to ride, and with three camels fully loaded with their possessions and supplies, there were only seven that would have room for passengers.

Rebekah gave gifts to the mothers of the girls who were coming with her, which did little to make them feel better but at least showed that Rebekah understood that they were making a sacrifice. The girls themselves varied from excitement to be seeing the world to abject homesickness, but Rebekah knew that if any of them was too unhappy she’d find a way to get her home as quickly as possible. Though it wouldn’t be wise to let them know that right now.

Deborah was the only one who really worried Rebekah. The girls would be resilient, and no doubt would enjoy playing the role of confidantes of the lady of the household. They would probably shed their tears of homesickness, but they would also adapt quickly to their new home. Deborah, however, had no concept of taking pride in her closeness to Rebekah. It would be strange to her, and Rebekah did not know what she would do if Deborah were desperately unhappy.

It was Deborah herself who put her at ease. When Rebekah said something about hoping she’d soon get used to her new home, Deborah only laughed. “Silly, I’ve done this before. When I came here. And I’ll be happy for the same reason I was happy here.”

“What reason is that?” asked Rebekah.

“You, silly,” said Deborah. “I have my darling girl.” And with that Deborah walked away in order to submit to the indignities of being put on top of a long-suffering camel.

Soon they were all mounted and the camels were on their feet, so that Rebekah looked down on Father’s camp from a point higher than the tops of many of the tents. It looked so different from here. The tents were all so small, and filled such a small space. The green-and-gold hills around the camp were so much larger. And Rebekah knew from all her previous trips from one pasture to another that these hills were not even particularly large ones, and that they went on row after row, from here to the great river Euphrates, or if you went the other way, through great mountains and then down to the sea. And even that was only a small portion of the world. Yet this camp had been her world, really, despite visits elsewhere. It had held all the people that she loved. And she would always love them, even though she did not know whether she would ever see them again. Because she would carry them with her in her memory. She would see everything with eyes they had taught to understand what they saw, and she would hear everything with ears that had learned language from their voices.

How could she ever love a husband as much as she loved her father, her brother, her newfound mother? How could she ever understand a new household the way she knew every soul in this camp? How could she ever feel that she truly belonged somewhere, the way she belonged here?

Today, there was no shortage of weeping servants, and what Rebekah had wished for last night, she had in plenty: They grieved to lose her. They had not resented her leadership. They loved her, and were sorry to see her go.

Then all the good-byes had been said, and though the sun was already warm and they were only a few hours from noon, Eliezer began to tug the lead camel, starting the procession moving forward. Rebekah understood: Hot as this day’s travel would be, it was necessary to go as far as they could the first day, to put distance between them and their past.